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"It's difficult to measure this perfectly because some young people lie about their age," Zuckerberg said Wednesday during his company's second-quarter earnings call. He went on to note that his social network's reported hemorrhaging of teenagers is not simply exaggerated, but in fact, outright false.

"Based on our data that just isn't true," he said. Zuckerberg added that activity for teens has been steady over the past year and a half, not including Instagram, which if combined with Facebook use, would show an even better metric.

Zuckerberg also took a shot at the notion that alternatives to Facebook are driving down time spent on the site. "You could naively assume that more new services means people spend less time on Facebook," he said. "People on average are spending more time on Facebook than ever before."

About the author

Nick Statt is a staff writer for CNET. He previously wrote for ReadWrite and was a news associate at the social magazine app Flipboard. He spends a questionable amount of his free time contemplating his relationship with video games while continuously exploring the convergence of tech, science and pop culture.
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